From the Washington (D.C.) Morning Times, 11/13/1895, p. 1, c. 4

MAKES HER USUAL PROTEST
Miss Van Lew Pays Her Taxes and Kicks Vigorously.
She Denounces Taxation Without Representation, Wants to Vote and Participate in Legislation.
(Special to The Times.)

Richmond, Va. Nov. 12. – Miss E. L. Van Lew today sent to the Richmond papers the following protest:

“I have paid this day my State taxes for 1895, and hereby enter my solemn protest against taxation without representation, and any law by which women are deprived of the ballot or prohibited from participating in legislation in general.”

Miss Van Lew makes this protest annually. It was she who secretly furnished Gen. Grant much valuable information during the siege of Richmond by the Federal army and was rewarded by an appointment as postmistress of Richmond, which position she occupied for a number of years subsequent to the war.

Miss Van Lew is now a little shrunken old woman, with corkscrew curls and eyes as bright as two diamonds, a little flighty in her conversation, the terror of small boys in the vicinage of her rather large domain on Church Hill, overgrown with vines and shrubs, and when not pottering about her yard and flowers is pouring into some unwilling ear the peculiar sentiments of which the above is a sample.

Once ostracized and despised as a spy among her people, she is now tottering with old age and is a subject only of interest and pity.

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